Here is the synopsis of our sample research paper on On Science: Constructivist Views vs. Rationalist Views
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This 3 page paper discusses the constructivist and rationalist views of science and scientific experimentation and argues that rationalism is more persuasive. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVConRat.rtf
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sociology (Campa). Merton and those who followed him believed that "the sociology of science had to be a discipline perfectly compatible with the philosophy of science. The first had to
study the functioning of scientific institutions and communities, while the second [had] to provide science with effective methods, concepts, definitions, orientations" (Campa). In short, both disciplines had as their goal
"the progress of scientific knowledge" (Campa). However, "in the mid-1960s an irrationalist and idealist reaction against the Merton school was born" (Campa). Campa calls this a "pseudoscientific sociology of
science" known as the "constructivist-relativist" school; it is people by those, like Collins and Pinch, who appear to mistrust science and go out of their way to attack it (Campa).
They seem to regard science as "an ideology ... with no legitimate claim to universal truth, one more social construction on a par with myths, dress codes, and a variety
of politicking" (Campa). Collins and Pinch are leaders of the "most explicitly relativist movement" in postmodernism; they are part of the "Bath group," so named because they began their work
in Bath, in the U.K. (Campa). There are other groups, such as the Edinburgh group, whose members include people "who insist that science is socially determined and that all scientific
programs and results can be explained ... as the result of social interests" (Campa). There is another group of constructivists led by "Krohn, Whitley, and Knorr-Cetina which assumes that science
is practical, local and constructed (and not theoretical, universal, and discovered as it is traditionally postulated)" (Campa). Campa argues that constructivists "can admit that the material world exists, but they
will not admit that it is regulated by laws and that human minds can perceive the features of the world only through the use of senses and reason" (Campa). Instead,
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